Legacy data networking applications such as 10/100/1000 Mbps (millions of bits per second) Ethernet, Fiber Channel and ESCON (Ethernet, Fibre Channel and Enterprise Systems Connection) use a character/block-oriented encoding mechanism to perform word/character delineation for segregating and transporting user and control information over a shared medium. (For additional information on these various legacy data networking applications see, e.g., IEEE 802.3, “Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Detection” (CSMA/CD) Access Method and Physical Layer Specifications, 1998 Edition; ANSI X.3230-1994 Fibre Channel Physical and Signaling Standard (FRC-PH) and Enterprise Systems Architecture/390 I/O Interface, 1990.)